Reporting a violent summer

For an hour one recent night, I spoke with parents who lost children to gun violence. They cried as they recalled how they learned of the death, their initial reactions, and the mental fog afterward.

The work matters: Families appreciate when outsiders take an interest in their loss. And working overnight shifts on weekends at the Chicago Tribune offers a prime vantage point on the violence everyone agrees is a problem -- but nobody can seem to solve.

Good people live in neighborhoods plagued by crime and violence, and families aren’t the only ones affected when someone gets shot.

But for relatives of victims, their worlds implode when they lose a loved one. While working at the Tribune, I visit the scenes where it happens, talk to relatives, and try to put fuller meaning to a grim daily statistic.

Often, it is conversations like the one with parents who've just lost a child that lead to the coverage you read in the newspaper and at chicagotribune.com.